The Fascinating Kingdom of Mari (1)

In the heart of the Syrian Desert, just off the western flank of the Middle Euphrates about twelve kilometers from the Iraqi border, stands one of the most important, yet least known, of the archaeological sites in Mesopotamia And while modern access, on a paved highway from nearby Deir Ezzor, is well populated by desert villages and grazing flocks, Mari, or Tel Hariri, early in the twentieth century was remote and virtually inaccessible, so was discovered, as often happens in archaeology, by pure chance.

  It would seem that in the heat of May, in1933, a French officer on his way through Syria was stopped by a young shepherd in the desert, who said he needed an informed opinion. The officer, exhausted from the long journey, was only too glad to dismount, to rest and water his horse.

The young man, however, insisted that the officer look at his find. He had just stumbled across an unusual statue, carved of the local crystallized gypsum, as he turned over the more ordinary stones with which to cover a grave.

The statue appeared to be old, said the young man, and the officer noticed that despite the absence of a head, it was very beautiful. His curiosity aroused, the officer notified the authorities in the Department of Antiquities and Archaeology in Deir Ezzor.

A commission was immediately dispatched to the site, and with only a minimum of effort further artifacts came to light. Sections of mud-brick wall, more gypsum statues in ceremonial dress, votive offerings, as well as an inscription that identified one figure in particular as a representation of King Lamgi Mari, thus confirming that the disorderly stones and fragments of construction, now strewn across Tel Hariri, were in fact bits and pieces that might provide a clue to the legendary Mesopotamian stronghold of Mari, whose whereabouts, despite its importance and unique circumstances, had for decades confounded both archaeologists and historians. It would seem that Mari, perhaps by 2900 B.C., had grown from a village to a more ambitious settlement, surely because of its strategic location, thus offered the possibilities for the construction of a new city.

The site, in effect, came to control the trade lanes between western Iran and central and southern Mesopotamia, with Karkemish and the fertile Syrian steppes to the north in Anatolia – now part of Turkey-and throughout the Khabur-Euphrates river system.

The embankments farther to the south offered additional protection for the caravans bringing their goods to the merchants of Tadmor (later Palmyra), Halab (Aleppo), Qatna, the Emesa (Homs)-Tripoli gap on to Byblos in the west and Damascus to the southwest. Mari was a center of art and culture, which extended to the demands of an assortment of cults and temples. And with this came a parallel political power, since the city, now stable and firmly established, was the core of the dominant hegemony in the Middle Euphrates, controlling trade all the way down to Balikh, on the Persian Gulf.

At the time Mari was discovered Syria was under French mandate. This permitted the assigning of the project to the already celebrated AndrÈ Parrot, a seasoned archaeologist experienced in Mesopotamian architecture, who managed to direct the exhaustive excavations until 1974.

During those years Mari’s secrets, though still obscure, and often in counter position to the fieldwork and research of other teams operating in the area, little by little came to light. A Syrian people, it appears, had adopted the Sumerian culture, but recreated it according to their own dictates, with a peculiar grace, subtlety, and completely personal artistic vision. Samples of this style are on exhibit in the National Museum in Damascus, the National Museum in Aleppo, the exceptional archaeological museum in Deir Ezzor, as well as the Louvre in Paris. After 1978 work came under the direction of French anthropologist Jean-Claude Margueron.

Mari’s impact on the history of Mesopotamia probably began with the construction of the first palace complex, between c. 2700 and 2600 B.C., with its thick adobe walls, cisterns and possibly the first temple, later, in subsequent construction phases, consecrated to Ishtar.

The Great Temple of Dagan, deity of storms and the heavens, was then added as part of the palace complex, and by around 2500 B.C. had become the nucleus of a cult that attracted not only local worshipers but also pilgrims from the surrounding countryside, up and down the river.

The kings of Akkad (Northern Mesopotamia) attributed their success to Dagan, so fashioned great bronze lions to represent them at the temple doorway; and by the time of the Third Dynasty of Ur his cult had become the official state religion. He was the principal deity in Ebla, in western Syria, by 2300 B.C. and his cult was carried to Ougarit, on the Mediterranean coast, by around 1300 B.C. There he was venerated as the father of Baal, the second most important deity after the Supreme God “El”.

In time Dagan, especially the Philistines, ancestors of the Palestinians, also venerated himself, as a principal deity. Mari saw another period of ascendancy between c. 2340 and 2150 B.C., during the reign of Sargon II of Akkad, when the king used the city as the base for his campaign of expansion.

His domination was short-lived, but he left as a legacy the cult of Shamash, the remains of whose temple were uncovered near the “Maison Rouge”, a knoll of rust-red earth adjacent to the current palace excavations, possibly the location of the original temple-pyramid -the ziggurat-that according to legend existed in Mari before the period of palace architecture. By around 2000 B.C. the population suddenly swelled as a result of the arrival in Mari of a confederation of tribes called the Amorites, some one hundred and fifty years before the legendary palace-builder Zimri-Lim – also Amorite but from another tribe ascended the throne. As it happened, before being invested with the command of Mari, Zimri-Lim was shrewd enough to have taken refuge in Aleppo, and only returned to Mari on the occasion of the death of his rival, the Assyrian king Shamshi-Adad I.

Mari thus attested to a parade of migrations, among them Bedouins seeking agricultural or pasture land, armies in search of booty, and merchant caravans in search of markets. The center of the city came to be defined by its formidable outer walls, and a moat, nearly two kilometers across, fed by the great blue green Euphrates, that protected the

vast complex of palaces and temples, harem, baths, administrative offices, audience halls, banquet halls, storerooms, kitchens and baking ovens, royal apartments, elite residential areas, guest quarters, artisan quarters, the library, archives and study centers. Though construction had actually begun in the Third Millennium it was often modified, by a succession of rulers whose thread has perhaps been lost. Yet the ruins of a temple to the deified king Ninni- Zaza verify an exalted royal lineage.

And by the time Zimri-Lim, the last king, ascended the throne the palace had been expanded to include three hundred rooms on two levels covering twenty-five thousand square meters, as well as at least two courtyards open to the sky, their walls as tall as five or six meters, decorated with mural painting that documented the investiture of kings and the taking of slaves.

Zimri-Lim’s spectacular palace was apparently destroyed, and in fact, according to the descriptions left on the cuneiform tablets of the time, practically leveled, by the Babylonian king Hamurabi, in 1750 B.C. Yet damage was such that the great walls fell in on them, were covered by the desert, and survived, despite the passage of time and the harshness of the climate, until Parrot’s arrival in 1933. According to the archaeologist, the palace represents the oldest and most complete example ever discovered of Mesopotamian architecture.

The supports for the second floor somehow managed to survive so with this a number of doorways remained miraculously intact.

Haifaa Mafalani